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posted by martyb on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the suits-me-fine dept.

Elon Musk has unveiled the spacesuit (or flight suit) that will be used by astronauts aboard crewed Dragon flights:

In his Instagram post, Musk added that this suit was not a mock-up but rather a fully functional unit. "Already tested to double vacuum pressure," he wrote. "Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. Easy to do either separately." (Double vacuum pressure simply means the suit was probably inflated to twice the pressure of sea level and then put into a vacuum chamber.)

Musk gave no other technical information about the suit. Most strikingly, it is white, in contrast to the very blue spacesuits unveiled by Boeing in January.

These are not, strictly speaking, "space suits." Rather, they are more properly flight suits designed to be worn during the ride to space and again on the ride back down to Earth. They have a limited time in which they can operate in a full vacuum and are not intended for spacewalks.

Related: Boeing Unveils New Spacesuits for Starliner Astronaut Taxi


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Boeing Unveils New Spacesuits for Starliner Astronaut Taxi 11 comments

The NASA astronauts who fly aboard Boeing's new spaceship will wear sleek, blue suits that are lighter, simpler and more comfortable than the bulky orange gear of the space shuttle era, company representatives said.

Unveiled today (Jan. 25), the new "Boeing Blue" spacesuits for the Starliner capsule weigh about 20 lbs. (9 kilograms) each with all of their accessories, compared to 30 lbs. (13.6 kg) for the old space shuttle suits, NASA officials said.

Other advances include touch-screen-sensitive gloves, more-flexible material and soft helmets that are incorporated into the suit (rather than the hard, detachable helmets of the shuttle era).

"It is a lot lighter, more formfitting, and it's simpler, which is always a good thing," NASA astronaut Eric Boe said in a statement. "Complicated systems have more ways they can break, so simple is better on something like this."

Source: http://www.space.com/35456-boeing-unveils-starliner-spacesuits-photos.html


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Breaking News: Falcon Heavy Maiden Launch Successful (Mostly) 103 comments

Update: Launch seems to have been successful. The two side boosters landed nearly simultaneously. Footage from the drone ship was cut off. The car made it into space; but the third stage will need to coast through the Van Allen radiation belts for around six hours before it makes the final burn for trans-Mars injection.

Update 2: The middle booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship
Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Media Briefing - Megathread

SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, is set to be launched at around 1:30 PM EST (6:30 PM UTC) today. The launch window extends to 4:00 PM EST (9:00 PM UTC).

SpaceX will attempt to recover all three boosters during the launch. The two previously-flown side boosters will attempt to land nearly simultaneously at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zones 1 and 2. The center core will attempt to land on a drone barge hundreds of miles off the coast of Florida.

The dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy is Elon Musk's personal 2008 Tesla Roadster. It is carrying a mannequin wearing SpaceX's space suit flight suit that will be used when the company begins to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The car will be launched into a heliocentric orbit that will bring it close to Mars (and back near Earth) periodically, and is equipped with three cameras. Its stereo system will be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity.

If the launch is successful, the Falcon Heavy could be flown within the next 3 to 6 months for a customer such as the U.S. Air Force, Arabsat, Inmarsat, or ViaSat.

Falcon Heavy will be capable of launching 63,800 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO), 26,700 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), 16,800 kg to Mars, or 3,500 kg to Pluto (New Horizons was 478 kg). It will supplant the Delta IV Heavy, which is capable of launching 28,790 kg to LEO or 14,220 kg to GTO. Space Launch System Block 1 will be capable of launching 70,000 kg to LEO (Block 1B: 105,000 kg to LEO, Block 2: 130,000 kg to LEO).

Musk has suggested that an additional two side boosters could be added to Falcon Heavy (perpendicularly?) to make a "Falcon Super Heavy" with even more thrust. This may not happen if SpaceX decides to focus on the BFR instead, which as planned would be able to launch 150,000 kg to LEO while being fully reusable and potentially cheaper than the Falcon 9 (or capable of launching 250,000 kg to LEO in expendable mode).

The webcast can be seen here or directly on YouTube.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:21AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:21AM (#558375)

    So should I wear the white suit or the blue one...

    Lovely technical article, verry useful.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:54AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:54AM (#558393)

      It is actually easy to balance aesthetics and function: Function always trumps aesthetics, or you're doing it wrong.

      Note that I'm not saying that making it aesthetic without compromising on function isn't a hard task in itself, but that's not balancing aesthetics and function, that's optimizing aesthetics under the restriction of function. Or in other words, design.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:44PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:44PM (#558474)

        Function over aesthetics?

        If you were floating in the ocean, hoping for rescue, would you rather be in stylish white, or ugly orange?

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:33PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:33PM (#558488)

          > would you rather be in stylish white, or ugly orange?

          Boeing has decided that camo-blue was the best color for ocean touchdowns. I guess they don't expect you to leave the ship...

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:35AM (5 children)

    by Virindi (3484) on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:35AM (#558379)

    It's an emergency suit, right? So that means that it is minimally articulated, as opposed to general purpose suits designed to do work in a vacuum environment? And it has less or no thermal protection because it is for use inside a craft?

    Maybe I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the difficult parts of making a suit were: 1) the articulation points, and 2) thermal management. Is the purpose of showing this off just to show how cool it looks rather than showcase technical accomplishment?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:43AM (1 child)

      by lentilla (1770) on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:43AM (#558391)

      Just because something is obvious to me does not mean it is obvious to other people. In my experience, this is highly prevalent amongst "engineering types".

      We need the story-tellers as much we need the engineers.

      Put bluntly, it's the general excitement that makes it easier to pay for the engineers to continue doing what they were going to do anyway... pay or not. I can't believe I just made an argument in favour of a marketing department. Can't tell if I feel dirty or liberated.

      • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 24 2017, @10:58AM

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday August 24 2017, @10:58AM (#558398)

        Maths and science works like once I have derived/grokked a concept it is obvious. But grokking is a hard process that can take hours/days. Funny huh.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:44AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:44AM (#558392)

      This [airspacemag.com] article gives the details on the goals, specifications, and purposes for these sort of suits. Boeings blue butt or NASA's pumpkin suits for instance is intended for the same purpose. Like you mention it is not an EVA (space walk) suit, but a suit worn during ascent/descent intended to protect the astronauts in case of unplanned depressurization or other ship failures. However, doing that is no small feat as you seem to be implying. Doing that and making it look good is a major accomplishment.

      • (Score: 1) by NateMich on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:23PM

        by NateMich (6662) on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:23PM (#558487)

        It certainly looks cool, like something out of a comic or maybe a movie.

        But for sure, I'd rather have form over function in something designed for life support.

      • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:17PM

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:17PM (#558505)
        That article points out something else important too. The blue Boeing suite is 10 lbs lighter than the NASA pumpkin suite. That's a noteworthy accomplishment.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:30PM (#558434)

    By Apple(TM)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @07:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @07:01AM (#558754)

      * "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
      * Insert coin
      * "You're holding it wrong"

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